5 Ways to Improve Your Writing Style (Part 1)

The Impetus

After reading much recently from online and from my students and from other sources, I concluded that some people may like a post regarding improving your writing style. I looked through a few posts on this topic just to make sure I'm not being redundant with my approach. What I found was that writers focus their advice either on grammatical errors or on soft concepts such as being interesting and reading good writers.

Eliminating grammatical errors really does not help style; it simply removes poison from writing. On the other hand, these soft concepts give you a direction to go, but they do not give very specific instructions to work from or tools to work with. Therefore, this blog post series will focus on offering instruction and handing over tools to help your writing go from good to better.

Initially, I began writing out all the five ways in one long post, but I found that this topic would make for a very long post. So this one article will be broken up into a series of five different posts to facilitate easier reading.

These blog posts will be working through components of basic composition and expository writing. The former concept may be very familiar to you, but the phrase "expository writing" probably raised a few eyebrows, so allow me to define expository writing: expository writing strips down a work into the clearest and shortest way of saying things, thus exposing the meaning of your words. It will help you shape your words to your intended meaning and, therefore, enhance your existing communication abilities.

As I go into this topic, I carry with me a few assumptions. First, you understand and use proper grammar. I will not be reviewing errors, so you better know how to write right. Also, you read enough to have an advanced vocabulary so words like antithesis and salient and jocular don't scare you, and in fact, you probably know what they mean. Finally, you have read widely enough to know of certain authors when I mention their names to know who they are, so I don't have to mention the extent of their careers.

List It Out: Create Outlines

Outlines are simply fragments or sentences ordered down a page. Their function is to help you organize your thoughts and create a sequence for their delivery.  Since most professional writers do some form of outlining, it won’t hurt you either because the concept and process is not very hard. In fact, you probably already do it in your head.

As to their formation on paper, outlines group similar topics together and order those grouped topics in a series. Essentially, you are simply trying to find likeness as much as possible. The process is similar to organizing a drawer of socks, putting the darks on one side and the lights on the other, or organizing a closet, putting together dress shirts and casual shirts and jackets and pants as well as arranging by color inside of each section. Another analogy would be is that outlining is a grocery list; you simply put the similar items or same aisle items together in order to save time in the store.

Let’s move to a writing example. You are composing an email inviting some friends to a paintballing event, and you need to get out all the information in a clear way. The outline could look like this:

Vital Info

• Date
• Time/Length
• Location
• Cost
• What to bring

Reasons to Come

• Chance to shoot each other
• Good food

You put the very vital information for your friends first so that they can decide whether they can come. And you put all the wonderful reasons to come last. Inside of the vital information, you put the date first because if there is a conflict with the day your friends won’t come. You put the time next because the day might work, but the time might not. Location and cost and what to bring may be interchangeable, but the order may depend on financial condition of your friends as well as how much equipment they have and whether they like the place. But in short, you consider the best order for your reader to receive the information.

Another common format for organizing materials is known as the motivated sequence by Monroe. You can find various locations that provide details on it such as Wikipedia, but here is the basic format.

• Attention
• Need
• Satisfy
• Visualization
• Action

In each step, you cover something different to move your readership to be primed for the last step, action. Thus, the goal is obviously to move the person to action, but the four steps are needed before in order to the person to the point of acting because each builds on the next. This classic outline is, therefore, excellent for persuasion, one of three main causes for writing. (The two others are to inform and to entertain.)

In short, many ways exist to outline your material; however, all outlining takes into consideration the grouping of similar ideas and creating a specific order for delivery. The reason for this two-fold consideration is due to a two-fold reason: outlines expedite and clarify your writing. The expediting is for your time’s sake, and the clarity is for your reader’s sake. Thus, outlines help both parties.

So the next time you begin to format an email, take a moment to write out a brief outline and then reorder your points for the best effect. Your email will be clearer, and you won’t have to send nearly as many clarification emails.

(A quick note: this outlining portion is done before your start your writing during the prewriting stage of your writing process. The entire writing process has essentially three parts: prewriting, writing, and rewriting. Rewriting will be the focus of the remainder of these posts.)